“A month earlier, Threatin had become an international laughing stock, after a small army of internet sleuths revealed that he had tried to fake his way to stardom using paid Facebook likes, YouTube views and bots.

He had uploaded deceptively edited film footage that appeared to show him playing to sold-out crowds, lied about a non-existent award and album sales, completely fabricated an entire US tour, and used it all to secure a 10-city tour of Europe and the UK.

"McDougall had no idea that what he had uncovered would lead to the arrest and indictment of eight police officers, nor that it would implicate at least a dozen more and point to a mole within the local prosecutor's office.

He had no inkling that it would unravel hundreds, and potentially thousands of criminal investigations, and free men from prison who’d sworn from the very beginning that they were framed, robbed, or both. It would one day explain the murder of a young father in front of his family, and raise endless questions about the death of a homicide detective, shot dead the day before he was supposed to testify against the rogue officers.

In a post-Harvey Weinstein and #MeToo world, most people are well aware sexual harassment occurs in the workplace. But across the US, women are subjected to it in a far more intimate setting - their homes.

Every year, hundreds of state and federal civil lawsuits are filed against landlords, property owners, building superintendents and maintenance workers alleging persistent, pervasive sexual harassment and misconduct, covering everything from sexual remarks to rape. This includes so-called "quid pro quo" sexual harassment, wherein the perpetrator demands sex in exchange for rent or repairs.

"In employment, you leave. It's horrible, but you can leave and go home," says Kelly Clarke, a supervising lawyer at the Fair Housing Project of Legal Aid of North Carolina. "This is somebody who can invade your home."

"In a small county in rural Tennessee, inmates were offered 30 days off their sentences in exchange for a vasectomy or a long-acting birth control implant. County officials say it was a tool in the fight against opiate abuse - opponents call it eugenics."

"At some point a tall, thin man appears in their midst, dressed in papery green hospital scrubs - an ID bracelet on his tattooed wrist and EKG leads still stuck to his chest. He picks up a poster and holds it high in the air.

'I got shot last night,' he says, pointing to a piece of gauze taped to his right cheek. 'I still got two bullets left in me.'

His name is Devrone McKnight - the 23-year-old was driving himself home from the hospital when he saw the ceasefire volunteers by the side of the road. He says he's ashamed. He'd heard about the ceasefire effort but had made no plans to participate.

"The Supreme Court decisions that freed David have no effect on his brother's case. On the day that the murder took place, Sammy Maldonado was 18 years, four months and 10 days old - legally speaking, an adult.

Even though it was David who stabbed Steven Monahan, in the eyes of the law, Sammy's age of 18 automatically classified him as a fully mature adult, capable of making the same decisions as a 40-year-old, while his brother was a juvenile with a still-developing brain who required special consideration.

'Sammy didn't do the stabbing, he got beat up - but he was 18 years,' says Michael Wiseman, a lawyer for both men. 'He is far less culpable than David.'"

"They call it 'the city without a zip code'. Sixty-one cars and a little over a mile long, the Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey train is still the primary residence for most of the 107 performers and crew on the Red Unit, one of two remaining touring shows. There are 32 coaches divided into apartments of varying sizes, with as many as 16 people per car sleeping on narrow bunks. The youngest children sleep in the same car with their parents. Some of the families even keep cats and dogs."

"The night before, the mayor of tiny Talladega and a crowd of about 100 well-wishers cheered as the buses pulled out of town. It was a loving send-off that contrasted sharply with the treatment the band had faced in previous weeks.

Several other high schools and colleges, including historically black institutions like Howard University, declined the invitation or didn't even apply to play at Donald Trump's inauguration.

As soon as it was announced that the Marching Tornadoes was the sole black college to accept, they were called sell-outs, race traitors and worse."

"As it turns out Trump's voters were not silent or invisible - Trump's voters are Barletta voters. They're the struggling white working class who felt that for eight years their lives have only gotten harder, their needs shuffled to the bottom of a pile on some desk in Washington DC. They've been here the whole time, waiting for a candidate like Trump to sweep them off their feet.

"Since they were little boys, Castile and his three best friends could reliably be found on the same rickety porch in the Summit-University neighbourhood of St Paul, Minnesota. It is cluttered with mismatched and broken chairs, old fence posts, a grill. But it always provided a perfect perch from which they could survey the goings-on in the neighbourhood.

While critics mocked Kaepernick for being a multi-millionaire complaining about injustice, teams like the Woodrow Wilson Tigers - which is made up entirely of black and Hispanic players, in a school where 85% of the students qualify for the state's free lunch programme - are actually living in places where, for a number of social and economic factors, the odds for success are stacked against them.

"I think it is indisputable that if you are born black and Latino in a city like Camden you have a far steeper mountain to climb to enjoy the same freedoms as the rest of our country," says Paymon Rouhanifard, the Camden City School District superintendent.

When he was 22 years old, Winrow was arrested in his mother's home in Los Angeles, California, with 151.9 grams of crack cocaine, a scale, a gun and $3,209 (£2,444) in cash. It was not his first bust - he had been arrested three times over the course of three months with tiny amounts of the same drug, and admitted he was a dealer.

Winrow was sentenced to life in prison under a brand new law. He was the first person in the US to be charged under the Anti-Drug Abuse Law of 1988, one of the cornerstones of Reagan's "war on drugs".

Even in death, Ali's legacy remains tied to Louisville's west side. Bailey says that - with thousands of people descending on Louisville for the funeral and the city rising to the occasion of international attention - he hopes lasting change will follow Ali's death.

"The spotlight is not just on Kentucky or on Louisville, but on a predominantly African-American part of Louisville that, even locally, is forgotten," he says.

"Nothing identifies tour guides like Craig as different from the other staff roaming the halls of the prison. There is no special signage or promotion of their tours anywhere. After a year of planning, hiring and training, the tours began without announcement or fanfare in March.

'We are in new territory, uncharted territory,' says Lauren Zalut, Eastern State's director of education and tour programmes, who leads the new group. 'No other museums really around the country are doing work like this.'"

"Instead of getting dragged through a jury trial, something surprising happened. Moreland's lawyer Kristi Flint told the St Clair County state's attorney office that her client was innocent. In response, the prosecutor offered Moreland the chance to take a polygraph test. Flint nervously agreed, and Moreland passed. Six months after her arrest, the charges were dropped. Everyone, including the Fairview Heights police department, agrees that Moreland is innocent."

"David Mahoney is $21,000 (£13,650) in debt. Not from credit cards. Not from school loans.

He's accumulated the massive tab because of the days he spent locked up in the local jail in Marion, Ohio, which is a small town with a major heroin epidemic. Mahoney, a lanky 41-year-old, has struggled with addiction since he was a teenager, eventually stealing to fuel his habit. He got caught a lot, even burgling the same bar twice."

In St. Peter's Cemetery in north St. Louis County, Michael Brown is buried alongside many other young, black victims of violence. Their lives mattered, too.

"Within a roughly 30-metre radius of Michael's grave there are at least 15 homicide victims. The youngest was a 15-year-old. Most of them were shot. There are also deaths by suicide, cancer, car accidents, but for those under the age of 30, the predominant cause of death is homicide."